Welcome to the blog of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. CTEN is a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the public at large with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Dear Colleague,

Courtesy
of the Fordham Institute, we again learn that there has been a large
uptick in the number of non-teaching staff employed in our public
schools. “The Hidden Half: School Employees Who Don’t Teach,” informs us that:

The
number of non-teaching staff in the United States (those employed by
school systems but not serving as classroom teachers) has grown by 130
percent since 1970. Non-teachers, more than three million strong, now comprise half of the public school workforce.Their
salaries and benefits absorb one-quarter of current education
expenditures. But is this growth necessary—or even sustainable?

A
look at countries which typically beat us in international comparisons
tells an important story. Switzerland spends 70 percent of its
compensation dollars on teachers and just 14 percent on other staff. In
Finland those numbers are 51:11 and Slovakia 54:14. But in the U.S., we
spend 54 percent on teachers and 27 percent on non-teaching staff.

In
another study, The Friedman Foundation – using U.S. Department of
Education’s National Center for Education Statistics data – found that
between fiscal years 1950 and 2009,

… the
number of K-12 public school students in the United States increased by
96 percent while the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school
employees grew 386 percent. Public schools grew staffing at a rate four times faster than the increase in students over that time period. Of those personnel, teachers’ numbers increased 252 percent while administrators and other staff experienced growth of 702 percent, more than seven times the increase in students.

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According
to a report on school choice by Katie Furtick, a policy analyst at the
Reason Foundation, more than 2.3 million American students were enrolled
in public charter schools in 2012-2013. Additionally,

States
continued to expand their school choice options last year, with 13
states creating or expanding their tuition tax credit programs, private
school scholarships or school choice vouchers.

Forty-eight
school choice programs are now available to children and their families
in the United States. This includes 22 voucher programs, 16 tax credit
scholarship programs, one education savings account program and eight
individual tax credit programs.

260,000 students used vouchers and tax credit scholarships in 2013.

Enrollment
in public charter schools increased by more than 250,000 between 2012
and 2013, totaling 5 percent of public school enrollment nationwide.

…
Survey respondents favor ending tenure by a 2-to-1 ratio. By about the
same ratio, the public also thinks that if tenure is awarded, it should
be based in part on how well the teacher's students perform in the
classroom. Only 9% of the public agrees with current practice in most
states, the policy of granting teachers tenure without taking student
performance into account.

And finally, there are some interesting results in the yearly Gallup poll that surveys
Americans on their attitudes toward labor unions. This year a question
was added about right-to-work laws, and the responses were not good news
for the unions. As Mike Antonucci writes,

The
poll finds 82% of Americans agreeing that ‘no American should be
required to join any private organization, like a labor union, against
his will,’ a position advanced by right-to-work proponents. Pro-union
forces partly oppose right-to-work laws because of the ‘free-rider’
problem, with non-union workers benefitting as much as union workers
when unions negotiate pay and benefit increases with employers. But by
64% to 32%, Americans disagree that workers should ‘have to join and pay
dues to give the union financial support’ because ‘all workers share
the gains won by the labor union.’

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And
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